


to love, may it ruin us

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Series: reflections (a harry potter fanfiction collection) [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Scorpius Malfoy Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 11:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10740552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: Family isn't always blood. Or, Scorpius Malfoy and the concept of family.





	to love, may it ruin us

 The first thing Scorpius Malfoy remembers is his father telling him he's sorry. It's a striking memory, one that he never forgets, one that he tells no one, because it is sacred, a apology from father to son, of regrets and loss and everything in between. 

He doesn't understand at the time why dad is sorry, because he has done nothing wrong. He doesn't understand why, and it's bliss. 

He grows up with glares, a father that protects him to no end, and the hatred of many. He grows up to hexes to his back, death threats, insults and slurs, and the talent of picking himself up at every turn. He knows healing spells, how they differ, what it feels like to be isolated, and maybe he starts to understand why dad is sorry. 

He isn't upset, isn't angry, because this is his life, this has always been his life. It is cruel, it is harsh, it is resiliency bred into his blood. It is finding hope when there is none, sometimes being the only thing holding his father together. It is taking the alcohol out of dad's hands, and putting the hazardously scattered shot glasses away, and hating the putrid stench of alcohol. 

It is growing up ahead of time, because his childhood is characterised by anger, Death Eater questions, and a father he adores. It is listening to his Aunts and Uncles laugh at inside jokes he doesn't understand, watching them take shot after shot as alcohol as their discussion topics got more and more absurd. It is hating the stench of alcohol, the way it leaked into everything, and it is watching the people he admired rely on it for support. 

Maybe it's a good thing that he's so jaded, because Hogwarts is worse. The insults are daily, his things stolen and missing daily. It is finding his things in the middle of the lake, clothes sent up fireworks as everyone laughed at the spectacle. It is getting the inevitable "Was you dad really a Death Eater?" every time the Dark Arts was brought up, every time they mentioned the war. 

He comes to hate people very quickly. He comes to hate Gryffindors for their arrogance and casual cruelty, the Ravenclaw for their dismissive attitudes, and the Hufflepuff for their inability to stop it. 

He learns another truth during seven years of Hogwarts: stay clear of the Weasleys, keep a exceedingly low profile no matter what, and clenched fists and bloodied crescents on his fingernails. 

He hasn't done anything wrong to begin with, but with how people treated him it was like he had personally run a vendetta to kill them. 

(He's tired, he's tired. It's something he knows well, in the same way he distrusts anyone who isn't someone he knows. He doesn't trust people, because if they made no effort to be the better person, he wouldn't put himself out there to begin with. And it's tiring, and it always will be. Because he longs for anonymity, for someone to treat him with basics of human decency. No one ever had.)

* * *

 

The first thing dad tells him the day he gets back from graduating Hogwarts is that in essence, everything is going to awful and everything is going to be horrible. It's done in the same way all things Draco Malfoy (or the Draco Malfoy he knows) are done: filled with too detailed descriptions, a cold edge, and interrogational prompts. 

He's sure his dad being his best friend is pathetic really, but it's true. Dad is the only person he knows like the back of his hand that he trusts, because there is nothing quite as strong as the bond between father and son, for them at least. 

He thinks it's fitting advice, because everything he knows is awful and horrible and it's nothing new, not when his clothes had been fixed and reparo'd so many times he had lost count. 

Dad smiles, one of the bittersweet nostalgic ones that speaks of memories he would tell him about, the ones where everything wasn't totally awful, a time that he finds only in his wildest dreams. "Don't drink too much, yeah?" He asks as a question, because he knows when those smiles came it would at least mean two nights of watching a forty something binge drink by himself. 

(It's one night this time, and he smiles in relief as he helps dad to the nearby couch. The stench of alcohol is awful and horrible, but it's something he's seen so many times over the course of seventeen years, and it's like an old friend.)

* * *

 

Life is awful and people are garbage, that was what his aunts and uncles had told him growing up, discussing murders and tortures and discrimination alike. All over alcohol poured into shot glasses, laughing at every comeuppance and criticism a Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw got. 

Aunt Tracey would describe the antics of idiots who thought they were above the law, smiling at the punishments in unabridged spite and joy. Aunt Pansy would mock their excuses, in a nasally tone, and Uncle Blaise (Professor Zabini at school) would tell stories of stupidity of all ages. 

He grows up listening to them talk, and he agrees with them, to an extent. After all, who else would have alerted them about the time James Potter the Second got called an 'absolute dung headed numskull' by Minerva McGonagall in his seventh year? 

(Although to be fair, he still hasn't told them about the time the Potters got drunk over dragon piss disguised as German Wine. Their vomit had looked awful.)

* * *

 

Sometimes, when it's early morning and he's unable to sleep, he finds himself inevitably thinking of the war. How his aunts and uncles (and family in general) were on the wrong side of it, and how it bit them back twenty plus years after the war. 

Sometimes, he would hear Aunt Pansy reminiscing, we were just kids, and he knows he will never truly understand them. The war was never his, it was theirs. It was their downfall and their mistakes, and their pain, and their regret, and it was his generation that handled the consequences more closely. 

He doesn't care about the names, the history, not in any sense that really and truly mattered. Blood was not always family, and to say blood was always family was insulting. Family was those who he cared for, for those who had genuinely cared for him. 

The war was over, but sometimes he wonders if it will ever truly be over. 

* * *

 

The window by the owlery is covered in owl waste, a hardened layer of bird waste forming the a snow like look that never melted. Birds fly in and out, hooting and coping with letters and packages alike. 

It's May 1st, and he has no place he wants to be. The halls are too quiet, the weight of the ghosts of Hogwarts dead a heavy and sinking spell on the Castle. Classes had been cancelled for the day, and he had chosen to stay. 

The silence is choking and he is all alone. Dad, Aunt Tracey, Aunt Daphne and the rest of the Slytherin Class of 1991 were probably at one of Uncle Blaise's or Uncle Theo's various houses, drinking expensive and largely untouched Firewhiskey, and talking about the war. In 1999, dad had told him that they'd walked the Hogwarts hall at close to midnight, and the castle had been completely different. Surreal. 

He resumes looking out the window. 

* * *

 

That night, he dreams of his mum. She had died in his second year or so, but if he's being honest, he doesn't really remember her that well. She'd been there, he knows, but she'd spent so much time working that the most vivid memory he had of her had been her staring at some news article, or falling asleep on the table from working. 

It's the only time he really thinks of her that much. Her health had deteriorated, a blood curse of some sort. He's not that well read of the specifics, but it's alright for the time being. 

(From what he had heard, she had died relatively happy.)

* * *

 

He finishes seven years at Hogwarts, only barely. It's painful and humiliating, and the classes he had skipped (over half in his seventh year) are a testament to it. 

The NEWT results are awful, but if anything, it's something that makes different from his family, this long line of overachieving bigoted monsters, and he holds that fact to his chest, like a secret only he truly understands. 

* * *

 

One night, he dreams. Of the damned Black Family he knows dad would trace out of habit, a lineage of a dying and toxic family. It's a stilted memory, one that's all shades of boring and wrong, if you knew where to look. 

There's an older man with glasses. A demanding and angry looking wife, and brothers. Both angry at the other, tensions boiling under the surface while they still cared for the other. 

It's in a sepia like tone, as if it's a jilted memory, some sort of record or preserved recording, and it's the most dysfunctional thing he's ever seen. There's hidden bottles of various alcoholic beverages close to the father and older brother, and the younger brother glares. The mother mutters under her breath, pacing the floor as she controlled the room. 

This is your past, it seems to scream at him, this is what you are descended from. This is who came before you, these are people who no doubt should mean something to you, but they never have. His past will never be his future. His future, as sad as it seemed at times, belonged to him, and only him. 

* * *

 

Define a legacy. Define a person's impact and how important they are. By whose standards is it being measured on? 

There's been a key ministry death, a sort of poisoning that had killed some high ranking and famous war hero or something like that. He knows Dad and his yearmates were probably downstairs talking about it, and he doesn't listen in this time. 

That was a bit of a lie. He was listening in. It's their typical routine, a cycle of talking while drinking, this state of constant unawareness of sorts. They were always much more honest at this hour, and it's only then he sees the full extent of their exhaustion. It's bone deep, this weariness, and it's times like this there's more he can do for them. 

They had always been family, this self destructive lot of forty-somethings who above all things, meant more to him than _Toujours_ _Pur_ ever did. 

* * *

 

And all things considered, he was happy. Happy enough to know he had enough. (And maybe it wasn't enough, maybe it was, but it was his, truly and fully his.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @mia-dearden! Please be nice in the comments.


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